All entries for October 2004
October 31, 2004
Halloween
So .. after last thursdays decision by Kostya and Alex to knock on the door of our neighbours to introduce ourselves (being fairly sure they were students and not just regular inhabitants of Leamington) and having a good night at Kelsey's and Mirage, we decided to brave the bus (though this was short lived when we saw the bus pulling away and therefore had to get a taxi) and go onto campus for the Halloween Ball. I think everyone had a good night, and there are a few, pretty boring, photos on here.
After just answering the door to a 'trick-or-treater' aged about six, you have to question how one day makes it 'O.K' to knock on strangers doors (interupting the dinner you've just spent hours cooking) to ask for money/sweets/suchlike… – Tradition? Phff…
Discuss
For moral fortitude .. was quite irrelevant in the conducts of one's life, it was better, or in any event easier, to be engaging and attractive.
Anita Brookner
Time
But Time (which Nature doth despise,
And rudely gives her love the lie,
Makes Hope a fool, and Sorrow wise)
Sir Walter Ralegh
— > Wasted a whole day successfully..October 28, 2004
Let reading week commence…
So, I guess I fall under that smug category of an arts student with a reading week.. so as the week commences I guess I should announce my good intentions to use it to (wait for it…) read…
We had a seminar on Tristram Shandy today .. Quite bizarre cause opinion was pretty divided on it. Some lost their interest in it as the text failed to build up a plot (!) but then others seemed to genuinely like it. I found the narrator sooo annoying at the beginning, but (as Sterne claims) the intensity and indeed, intimacy, increases as the plot continues I found myself laughing along with him etc..
Anyway, just got back from Earlsdon, from having a looovely dinner w/ Sarah (incl. jelly & icecream – who said it was a kids dessert..?) and its blatantly way too late to be thinking about Sterne!!
THE END
October 27, 2004
Tristram Shandy
The lectures, and perhaps even seminars this year seem to be taking a very different stance – the texts we're reading each week are hardly mentioned .. hmmm…
Anyway, *Tristram Shandy *- at first I hated it, the narrator is, truth be known, an egotistical (sp?) bastard who takes each and every opportunity to demote women and generally insult the common reader's intelligence. Yet, once you get past the first thirty pages, you might even start to like him, and laugh at what he's saying… (assuming he's male of course) though im not entirely sure that you are laughing with or at the voice… The plot is relatively plain, and indeed by the end of volume two he hasn't even been born yet .. but still Sterne manages to pull it off – and according to the lecture, this is because of the way that language can create its own world. And that language can express things beyond our own experiences, so that these experiences can form a new world, which exists totally in language. So yeah, this book was alright .. i think its supposed to be a love-hate one, but im sitting in the middle.